Gone: But the real lesson of the Charlotte Hogg affair is that too little has changed

One of the reasons former Chancellor George Osborne reached out to Canada to recruit Mark Carney as governor of the Bank of England is that he wanted a clean start.

The Bank stumbled in early handling of the financial crisis, proved too close to the banks it policed when Libor manipulation emerged and operated in an atmosphere of cosy complacency.

The Bank's board, or Court, was regarded as parti pris. It was a tremendous honour for the great and the good to serve on the Court as long as they didn't challenge the governor and his senior team.

The real lesson of the Charlotte Hogg affair is that too little has changed.

No one can blame Hogg for her privileged ancestry and CV. She clearly is very talented and as the Bank's chief operating officer, or top pen pusher, was well suited to the task with her McKinsey background.

To claim her gender contributed to her downfall, as Osborne tweeted, is unworthy.

As deputy governor of the Bank of England with responsibility for making sure markets work for the benefit of the City and the public good, Hogg's qualifications were fragile.

Carney was motivated by the correct cause of having at least one woman deputy and someone he knew and trusted, rather than seeking out the very best qualified person for the job.

There are any number of experienced British-based women economists working in academia, the civil service and among the independent forecasters who feature close to the top of the league table of the world's best research economists.

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Hogg's establishment background seemed to make her unassailable. It also led her to believe that the code of conduct governing Bank staff, which she wrote, was for lesser people, not herself, because she was above any conflict of interest.

She had four opportunities to recall her brother's work in a senior role at Barclays to the Commons but didn't disclose it until confronted with a formal questionnaire. With Hogg's resignation, the rest is now history.

What the whole episode exposes is that the comfortable atmosphere at the most senior level of the Bank has not been expunged.

Pledges made that the Court under Anthony Habgood would be more robust in dealing with governance failed miserably.

It encouraged Hogg to hang on when she should have resigned and saved the Bank public disparagement.

Andrew Tyrie, the forensic chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, has been a long-term critic of the Bank's governance. He has been proved right.

Yellen risk

So far the Federal Reserve, America's central bank, has escaped the ire of President Trump.

It will be fascinating to see how he reacts if Fed chairman Janet Yellen lifts the key US interest rate by a further quarter point to the 0.75 per cent to 1 per cent range today.

Delivery of the US rate increase has come more quickly than expected as America's jobless rate has fallen to 4.7 per cent and inflation has ticked up to 1.7 per cent. Markets expect the March rise to be the first of three in 2017.

In making interest rate decisions, the Fed normally talks about economic conditions. Trump's push for more growth through both tax cuts and infrastructure spending will clearly be a factor in Fed thinking.

If the past is any guide, the US central bank will also be thinking about equities. The long period of low interest rates is causing a bubble which has sent the Dow Jones above 21,000 and led to mad stock valuations, illustrated by trading in Snap Inc.

The Fed is conscious of how slow it was to react to curb irrational exuberance in the build up to the tech meltdown in 2000 and the financial crisis in 2007-08.

If Trump doesn't like it, he has the chance to begin reshaping the Fed which currently has two vacancies on its board.

It will have another more important one on February 2, 2018 when Yellen, a Democrat, ends her term. The White House could provoke a crisis by challenging her leadership before then. Handle with care.

New Pru

The importance of China and North America shows how dramatically the man from the Pru has changed since he hung up his hat.

Profits in Asia soared by 28 per cent to £1.5billion and Jackson Life in the US climbed 7 per cent to £2billion.

In the UK the Prudential is struggling with operating profits, down a whopping 32 per cent to £799million, and a write-off of £828million.

Osborne reforms killed off the mass market for annuities bought with pensions savings, which is just as well.

Alongside the other insurers, Pru has set aside £175million to cover the cost of a mis-selling inquiry by the Financial Conduct Authority.